MacBook Pro :: 13" 2010 System Sound Delay?

Ive been using Mac for almost a month now from purchasing my first Mac on my birthday. Ive got to say its an entire new experience and i love it something that is surely credited in my IT course i am currently studying as a student.Now i love the Mac Pro however being a perfectionist i do have a couple of issues.

One of them being with the system sounds when you receive an email or your battery is dying or your dragging something off the dock and you receive the puff sound.Now something i seem to be experiencing is quite a delay between these actions or sounds or at times no sound at all. Im guessing this is a software issue as i cant see any reasonable hardware explanation.

My second issue is the battery over just a months of use (taking care of battery letting it have normal cycles) it seems to have dropped form an estimated usage of about 5 hours to 3 fully charged basically pretty much idle other than safari open on a basic webpage.The next and final issue is the click when moving the mac i believe its the SMS motion thing, ive heard its possible to turn this off but how?

Last but not least :P im thinking of upgrading the hardrive at some point either to a faster 7200rmp or a Solid state, what would you recommend specifically for the mac? rather than in general also would this void my warranty or would apple do it based on my extended Apple Care package?